Eating a humble pie, he sat back down on the sofa and turned the TV on, eating his words, coming to meet half-way with his venting emotions. This man had a habit of meeting trouble half-way, very like Hamlet, who could never put on his mettle until it was too late. Of a piece was… Continue reading A Composition→

Out of thin airy waves flow sounds and sights/Artificial, what Ariel or Puck's behind?/What magicians but the poets, madmen, dreamers alike/That dare see beyond the horizon of time?/Milton, thank thee shall Mankind; that faith/You made immortal ere long, doth forever/Affect its course, as even 'ow I hear thy/Word: the apple as its cause in the… Continue reading Teachers Day 2017→

"The General Prologue as a microcosm of the medieval world" The idea of a pilgrimage as a framework for the tales lends Chaucer the device to represent ensembles of almost all kinds of occupations practiced, and, by extension, other aspects of medieval life in his time. This is one instance of the General Prologue being… Continue reading Chaucer, The General Prologue→

July 21st, 2017, Friday General A central work in the language and it seems, in Christian faith, Paradise Lost by Milton is his treatise on the world view he developed: the consideration of Ptolemy's ideas (book 8) and alternatives to them, setting Adam as the hero of his epic, and, if there are two… Continue reading Milton, Paradise Lost I→

The Canonization is the first poem we're discussing. Donne is a romantic individual associated with love songs ('erotica' it reads somewhere) besides his characteristic conceit. Now why'd someone throw metaphors at you that seem the remotest of imagination? Maybe they don't feel about them that way. Or maybe they do. And in our present case, we are… Continue reading Verse: John Donne, The Canonization→

"Where Nature doth with Merit Challenge." (I.i) That line pretty much sums up the looming theme of the play and the exposition. It sets up the exposition which takes the first act. It is valid for the account of Lear and Glouster's fates--background of which is set up in this act by this very line--which, though… Continue reading King Lear-I→

She stood in the doorway drinking from a bottle clear water that felt like liquor for reasons obscure even to her—failure, jealousy, regret? Confused and sad, looked outside in a sideways glace, beyond the metal door outside the glasspanes that made a wall for the opening into the verandah, the night was a deep inky… Continue reading A deep blue night→